BAGHDAD - Insurgent bombers detonated a van carrying a deadly payload of toxic chlorine gas in a crowded Iraqi market, police said on Wednesday, as violence continued to rage around the country.
The latest sectarian attack ripped through a Shiite enclave of Diyala province, northeast of the capital, late Tuesday, killing at least 32 civilians and wounding 65 more, according to local security and municipal officials.
Meanwhile, the US military released the names of seven soldiers killed or kidnapped in Iraq when Al-Qaeda wiped out their patrol on Saturday, as thousands more American troops searched for their missing comrades.
A Pentagon statement said a small unit from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division was deployed in Al-Taqa, south of Baghdad, on Saturday when it was attacked with explosives and automatic fire.
The Al-Qaeda in Iraq militant group has boasted of carrying out the ambush, in which four soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed and three Americans abducted, and a massive search operation has been underway for four days.
"Right now our focus is on searching for the missing soldiers, and we're trying to isolate the areas where we think they could be," said Major Kenny Mintz, operations officer for the missing troops' brigade.
"The (captors) don't have freedom of movement; if they have the soldiers, they can't move them from where they are. We're doing a deliberate search of the areas for the people responsible for the soldiers we're looking for."
Mintz said leaflets had been dropped around the area, a dangerous region of palm groves, orchards and tight-knit village communities around the town of Mahmudiyah, which has been nicknamed the "Triangle of Death".
Since Saturday's attack, more than 4,000 US troops backed by jets, dogs, helicopters and spy satellites have been scouring the district, in defiance of an Al-Qaeda threat to harm the captives if the search continues.
The Pentagon named three of the four slain soldiers as Sergeant James Connell, 40, of Tennessee; Private Daniel Courneya, 19, of Michigan and Private Christopher Murphy, 21, of Virginia.
One of the troops who died in the attack was so badly disfigured he has yet to be identified, but the Pentagon released four names which represent the dead trooper plus three kidnapped comrades.
They are: Sergeant Anthony Schober, 23, of Nevada; Specialist Alex Jiminez, 24, of Massachusetts; Private Joseph Anzack, 20, of California and Private Byron Fouty, 19, of Michigan.
Al-Qaeda, which in June last year tortured and killed two US soldiers it had captured near Mahmudiyah, has released a message mocking the American search and threatening to harm the captives unless it is called off.
Meanwhile, a truck bomb packed with tanks of toxic chlorine gas exploded in a market in a Shiite enclave in Diyala, a battle ground between US forces, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia.
Officials said the bombers struck at around 7.30 pm (1530 GMT) on Tuesday in Abu Saydah, an isolated Shiite community.
"A small van with gas canisters exploded in a crowded market, there were many people dead at the scene," said Captain Sadiq Mohammed. Other officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, spoke of 32 dead and 65 injured.
Interior ministry operations director Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf confirmed there had been an explosion followed by two mortar attacks on Abu Saydah, but was not able to give an official death toll.
In the southern city of Nasiriyah, radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia clashed with Iraqi security forces after overnight fighting left 11 people dead.
"The clashes have killed two Iraqi soldiers and nine civilians," in and around the city, said Hadi Badr, the city's top public health official, adding that 91 policemen, soldiers and civilians had been wounded.
He said two Mahdi Army fighters received treatment in the local hospital, but that many others were wounded and taken to other locations.
The fighting broke out late Tuesday when police arrested two members of the powerful Shiite militia and accused them of targeting US-led and Iraqi forces with homemade bombs and mortars, security officials said.
A delegation from the Mahdi Army, which commands widespread popularity among Shiites in Baghdad and across the south of the country, demanded police release the two men, but were refused, sparking the battle.
"They burned all the vehicles in front of one of the provincial government buildings in the centre of the city, but the governor was in another building next to it," said Colonel Rahim Ali of the Iraqi police.
Elsewhere in Iraq, seven people were killed in a series of attacks.

05/16/2007 10:22 GMT